Meet J Ryan Stradal | Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with J Ryan Stradal and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi J Ryan, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I’m born and raised in southeastern Minnesota — and lived most of my childhood in a town ringed by cornfields, halfway between an oil refinery and a nuclear power plant. All in all, if was both safe and strange, ordinary and unforgettable, where we had to make our own fun, and that was a wonderful crucible for imagination. I didn’t know of any writers who came from my town, or anywhere nearby, so it seemed like a real pie-in-the-sky idea to try to be one. I still had a lot of encouragement along the way from my teachers and school librarians, and even if I moved away to become that writer I dreamed of being, I wouldn’t be the writer I am today without their influence. I often feel like I should credit a few dozen people for authoring my books, and most of them would be people I met before I was eighteen.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Since my first novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, I’ve been inspired to tell stories that have a distinctly Midwestern setting, reflecting the locations, micro-cultures, and lives that I’ve rarely seen in fiction. As a young reader growing up in Minnesota, I was hungry to see representations of people and places I knew in the books I read, and eventually I figured out that I’d better do it myself if I want to see it — the old “write the book you’d buy if you knew it existed” routine. Still, it took me a while to build up the skill and confidence to write a manuscript worth reading. I read exhaustively in the genre I planned to write (general literary fiction), I took classes at UCLA Extension, I joined writers’ groups, and I co-produced a literary/culinary reading series as a fundraiser for an educational nonprofit. This filled the time between completing my first, unpublishable manuscript and my first publishable one, as well as immersing me in the culture of contemporary fiction. I not only became a better writer, I got a sense of what was being published and how those stories could be told. Then I sat down on my butt and got to work, and I’ve been at it ever since. As my friend Cecil Castellusci told me of being a novelist, “no one can have this career for you.”

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Los Angeles is a wonderful city to visit, especially for people who love distinctive food and drinks. It has the best Korean and Mexican food outside of Korea and Mexico, and a startling variety of flavors around the world that are often as budget-friendly as they are interesting. There are more options than I can list here, but I’d be tempted to take a visitor from the Midwest to, say, Jitlada in Hollywood for Thai food or Guelaguetza in Koreatown for something they definitely wouldn’t experience back home. Neither would break the bank.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d like to shout out to the public school teachers and librarians in my hometown, including (but not limited to): Pat Schultz, Gretchen Irvine, Carol Mattson, Sara Moen, Bill Schultz, Diane Saed, Jo Sweep, Janet Grove, Nancy Techam, and Norma Chatelaine, all of whom inspired me in different ways, and generously expanded the notions and tools of my expression. Thank you, so, so much.

Website: www.jryanstradal.com

Instagram: @jryanstradal

Twitter: @jryanstradal

Facebook: facebook.com/stradal

Image Credits
All photos: Peter Slapnicher